…The real difference is the GM worker a half-century ago had a strong union behind him that summoned the collective bargaining power of all autoworkers to get a substantial share of company revenues for its members. And because more than a third of workers across America belonged to a labor union, the bargains those unions struck with employers raised the wages and benefits of non-unionized workers as well. Non-union firms knew they’d be unionized if they didn’t come close to matching the union contracts.

Today’s Walmart workers don’t have a union to negotiate a better deal. They’re on their own. And because fewer than 7 percent of today’s private-sector workers are unionized, non-union employers across America don’t have to match union contracts. This puts unionized firms at a competitive disadvantage. The result has been a race to the bottom.

…The reason Wall Street bankers got fat paychecks plus a total of $26.7 billion in bonuses last year wasn’t because they worked so much harder or were so much more clever or insightful than most other Americans. They cleaned up because they happen to work in institutions — big Wall Street banks — that hold a privileged place in the American political economy.

…The “paid-what-you’re-worth” argument is fundamentally misleading because it ignores power, overlooks institutions, and disregards politics. As such, it lures the unsuspecting into thinking nothing whatever should be done to change what people are paid, because nothing can be done.

It’s not that working Americans are lazy/incompetent. Capitalists are greedy and powerful.
UPDATE:Conservative Myths About the Minimum Wage, Debunked
Contrary to conservative myths, raising the minimum wage would boost the economy, benefit all workers, and won’t hurt consumers.

Haha..We have much bigger problems than minimum wages. Won’t hurt consumers. An idiot job is going to cost more..that cost will be passed on to the consumer. Idiot job holders will have more money to spend stupidly. Consumers will be able to buy less idiot job stuff.

Or maybe they will just be laid off..find the right 10.10 an hr employees, work em like dogs for less than 30 hrs, and then avoid obamafail.

In all my forty five years on the job, I’ve worked with more young people who died before their time, then those who didn’t work hard as hell, every day. In fact, I can’t think of more then a handful of them.

How much you make has no relation to how hard you worked. It’s just not possible to work 4 hundred times harder then anybody else. It’s plain silly to think so.

The Case–Shiller home price index took off during the Bush administration. The so-called “Ownership Society” and lax regulation fueled the housing bubble and hid overall economic stagnation, declining wages, and rising poverty. Bush officials were never allowed to say the word “recession.”

The home bubble was part of the asset bubble which started in 1995.
The lax regulation was egged on and encouraged by Barney Frank, Maxine Waters and all of the “Roll the Dice” Democrats.
You are blind.

By the way, look at your own chart and look at the time on the far right. According to your chart there is a bubble now which is as bad as the one before, and Bush isn’t President anymore. So it must be Obama’s fault. Blame him under your rules.

This is an interesting NPR story. According to this story, the causes of the housing bubble are:

1. New wealth and savings in places like China who needed a place to invest it
2. Alan Greenspan lowered interest rates dramatically, when Clinton was president
3. Those new investors started buying mortgage pools since US Treasuries were paying such a low rate
4. Ratings agencies rated those pools at AAA (the DOJ is only prosecuting S&P, but not Moody’s, even though the evidence against Moody’s is stronger)

Your NPR link seems to agree with my contention that extreme inequality causes bubbles. When wealth is concentrated in relatively few hands, there aren’t enough investment opportunities in the “real” economy. So we end up with exotic financial instruments, and asset bubbles, followed by a collapse like we saw in 2008. If wealth is more equitably distributed, the “real” economy of goods and services is much better off.

Then-powerless Dems and always-powerless poor people did not cause Bush’s Great Recession and the meltdown of the financial sector. It was Republicans and rich people.

I haven’t actually listened to your NPR piece, but I’ll just bet Richard has interpreted it better then you have. That being said, NPR, for all of it’s great programs, is biased towards the right, and almost never lets people on to talk about really serious issues who make sense. They’re not allowed to do that unless the truthful panelist is outnumbered or the show ends just after an important question has been asked.

For some reason, Bill Moyers IS allowed to do that on PBS. Maybe it’s because he has brought them so much success in the past. The mission of his program is to bring people on that you never hear ANYWHERE, but who are out there trying to get out the truth.

You should watch!

All of the episodes are archived. None of the tapes have been destroyed. Watching the show is like taking a drink of clear cool water, after life threatening dehydration. Refresh your intellect.

I was offered a job for minimum wage once. I decided it wasn’t enough so I went and found a better paying job. I didn’t need my mommy to do it for me. Statists are just little babies who can’t deal with being grown-ups.

“A comprehensive analysis of international tests by Stanford and the Economic Policy Institute shows that U.S. schools aren’t being outpaced by international competition.

Socioeconomic inequality among U.S. students skews international comparisons of test scores, finds a new report released today by the Stanford Graduate School of Education and the Economic Policy Institute.”